How difficult/much harder was it to build a pc in the 90s/early 2000s compared to now?

[exyia]

I still remember when the original Antec 900 released and everyone went apes--t over the top 200mm fan exhaust innovation

 

I bought one too. but man it's a nightmare to work on by today's standards

[TetraSky]

Not so much difficult as it was expensive... Also there wasn't much info on the internet, unless you really knew where to find it, which I didn't.

I guess it was.. easier? Since there wasn't 20 different kind of cpu socket... could just take "that board with that ram and that cpu" and will it work.. now there's so much I have to check to make sure everything will fit properly and without exploding...

The hardest part was assembling without destroying your hands on the awful cases.

[Ryoku]

I am using an Enthoo Pro which I think is one of the most user friendly cases available. So how much more difficult was it ti build a pc then compared to nowadays?

 

Not a lot has changed really, cables have improved for better cable management, that's about all. remember those god awful ribbon cables =p

[mariohead123]

Not much harder, but it is much, much nicer to build a computer now.

The differences are cost, power efficiency, aesthetics, product quality (I am making a mug out of DDR2 DIMMs from manufacturers I have never even heard of. They all died out)

There's also the matter of how the amount of raw power you can fit in a computer of a certain size has just exploded in the past 4 years.

I consider the mid-90s to mid-00s to be the Dark Ages of computers. the vast majority of computers were running unexceptional hardware and windows 95/8/2000/XP. All the components were dust-magnets and there was no way to prevent dust buildup, and even brand new, the interiors looked absolutely disgusting. There was no optimization, no cable management or sleeving, no aftermarket cooling, no nice, sleek hardware, we had display cards instead of graphics cards, and everything was in that horrific cream colour.

I mean, look at this thing...

how-to-donate-computer-1.jpg

the last word in hideous, especially with hundreds of them in an office building. That colour doesn't look good on ANYTHING.

 

but that's what we had.

Now we have things like this:

WHITE-SYSTEMX800.jpg

The age of PC enthusiasm has finally been realized, because we don't have to spend a fortune to make a computer look completely badass (relatively speaking...)

The fluid in his loop looks like milk.

[IdeaStormer]

hihi, i hated molex ...i <3(ed)  SCSI ...

 

...i was devastated when ISA got obsolete; how should i use my cards from now on !?

 

You can still get a mobo with ISA so don't trash your cards if you truly want to use them. Drivers? Don't come to me.

 

SCSI was da bomb, ballers all had SCSI, lamers IDE.

[Leglessmatt]

The joys of giant ide and floppy cables. Jumper switches to set master and slave, and ensuring you put the drive in the correct part of the cable.

 

wasn't there also a 'cable select' option too, or was that never really used, or used for something else?

[Cookie Monster]

wasn't there also a 'cable select' option too, or was that never really used, or used for something else?

There was a cable select option but it never worked.

[KemoKa]

The fluid in his loop looks like milk.

[JAW96]

Cpus needed very little cooling and Ide cables were frigging everywhere. People also had CD/DVD drives in almost all computers.

I still install DVD drives in all my builds, I'm a new generation builder taught in the old generation ways!

[evinta]

I would say today its more complicated. I still remember the days when it was a very simple setup. One CPU with a cooling fan, One GPU... a voodoo 3 oh man the memories.

 

Today you have to think about SLI/Crossfire, cooling, case design so much more before you even buy the parts. It can be abit overwhelming! 

[Kingofpants]

I still install DVD drives in all my builds, I'm a new generation builder taught in the old generation ways!

Well , I ain't gonna stop ya. But eventually people stopped using floppies cause ~1.5 Megabytes was a little to small.

And The 9.8 Gig DVDs and 700Meg CDs don't look to big with the 10 Terabytes hard drive rolling round the hill.

[JAW96]

Well , I ain't gonna stop ya. But eventually people stopped using floppies cause ~1.5 Megabytes was a little to small.

And The 9.8 Gig DVDs and 700Meg CDs don't look to big with the 10 Terabytes hard drive rolling round the hill.

well they are useful for other things, I don't know about you, but I still have most of my movies on disc

[Speedbird]

I still install DVD drives in all my builds, I'm a new generation builder taught in the old generation ways!

So do I. I once burnt a bunch of software onto CDs and DVDs. I also have some games on DVDs.

 

And drives are cheap as f**k anyway.

[JAW96]

So do I. I once burnt a bunch of software onto CDs and DVDs. I also have some games on DVDs.

 

And drives are cheap as f**k anyway.

plus, if you have a bunch of old games like be (30 or so) 16 bucks is a small price to pay for that amount of convince!

[Yoinkerman]

You had to fuss more with the bios and Windows to get it to work right but other than that it was basically the same

[Kyuubixchidori]

Are you guys kidding? my 2001 case is amazing to build in. yeah, it might have a top mounted power supply, only 80mm fans, and no  easy removable hard drive trays, but its simple. theres nothing to figure out. want to take something out? you unscrew it. you want to put it back? you screw it back in. not all this plastic crap you see now adays.

 

easy to build in? yes. cables look nice? not at all. clear side so everyone can see? of course!

[chilicheeseburger]

When you look at cases from ten years ago you'll see cable management wasn't really considered necessary.

Also smaller fans (if any) and of course none of the modern design we have now. Today cases just look a lot more 'elegant'.

Also if you don't know how to build a computer today, you look it up on youtune and there's a bunch of nice tutorials, showing you in detail what to do. Back then that wasn't an option.

[Rhotis]

It wasn't hard, things were just uglier and more expensive.

 

 

Latish 90s we started seeing the bios handle the CPU settings.  My first board with that was I think an Abit or a Tyan for the pentium pro, ,cannot remember which one now.  

 

We started to see plug and play with win 95 but often it was trash in the beginning and even if you did not need to set it on the board you needed to manually set things up in windows or even autoexec.  

 

As has been mentioned cable management was not even a thought.  Air flow was barely a thought.  I remember my first case that seemed to have some thought to air flow was a supermicro full tower (to go with my supermicro dual pentium pro board).  We would today consider it to have lousy air flow but I was able with some creative use of zip ties get front to back air flow going.  To do this I however had to cut and splice some cables to make them longer in order to route them and tie them off properly.  Radio shack was useful back then

 

One of the biggest improvements over the years is power supplies.  They had "good' ones back then but really the attention to clean power delivery was just not there in the 90s.  We did not have the power requirements back then either though so perhaps it evened out a little.  

 

It was not uncommon for a peripheral to use a proprietary connector that was often just serial or scsi with its own adapter.  I remember my first scanner had a scsi interface that was some funky connector,, it came with its own controller card and if that went out you had to order another one.  

 

Buying PC parts was the biggest thing.  You often had to rely on a local PC shop if you were lucky enough to live in a city large enough to have one.  Once the internet started getting bigger you could find stores but many you were taking some risks back in those days.  I know a few people that got burned.  In the mid to late 90s pricewatch.com got big in the geek community with ratings and such to help us keep track of the fly by nighters.  

 

You look at it today and really more has changed than some people think.  We take it for granted thatt you can order from a company like NCIX or newegg or amazon etc and know you are going to have a reasonably good experience with the seller.  There are also a lot more places to look for reviews and info.  Back in those days unless you knew someone that had done this stuff you were basically reading about it and taking a leap of faith that your parts were compatable, that you would be able to apply TIM properly for the first time etc.  

[Bicko96]

its pretty much the same the only real difference is better looking hardware and cases with a ton more cable management